Pre-Employment Screening or Background Checking

Good Morning All,

I thought I would write today about the importance and ramifications of having a pre-employment screen done.

As you will know if you have been following my blog, I have recently experienced a job loss. The whole process has been a huge learning curve for me. I have never been in this position before. Whenever I have left a job, it has been on good terms and I have been in control of the situation. What concerns me most about my situation, is that if someone were to do a background check on myself... how would I come out of the process? Probably not that great at the moment!! And I know that I do a great job, I know that I am capable of and I am an honest, hard working individual.

Which leads me to think, we need to incorporate a 'right of reply' if our findings turn up a bad report. Undoubtedly our screening process would go back further than just most recent employers, and we would get a good picture of what an employee is really like. But what happens if there has been, for example, a family tragedy, illness or other major life-changing occurences during a period of employment. Surely a long-term employer would know to ride out the tough times with a good, solid employee. However this is not always the case. In the case of locums or short term positions, there is the whole 'unknown' factor. An employer may not know the history of a locum, they may not know what is going on in their private life that ultimately may affect their performance. They will undoubtedly be disappointed with the performance and hey presto, a bad experience is had by all.

I understand that for many employers, they are plainly not concerned about employee's as a whole person. They are interested only in their performance. As an employer myself, I do take a more compassionate approach, but I do understand that this is not the norm.

So how do we overcome this? ORNA performs background checking, or pre-employment screening and we will find out prospective employee's history. I will personally ensure that we have a facility in place to give a prospective employee a 'right of reply'. There must be the opportunity given for people to explain if there was something going on that made them less productive, less reliable etc. This of course will be passed onto the prospective employer so they are aware of the history of that person. It is then up to the employer to make the decision if they want to employ that person or not.

Enough talk! I need to get these processes in place!!!

Over and Out